Portishead

It's been 11 years since their last studio album, but still few can do claustrophobia and paranoia as coolly as Portishead. The hiatus might have resulted from having to reinvent themselves after becoming synonymous with a style as untrendy as trip-hop. On Third, all the heroin-fueled, nod-inducing breaks have been stripped away and retreaded with a dizzyingly bleak krautrock (see "Hunter", "Small" and "We Carry On") and bludgeoning mechanical beats ("Machine Gun"). The only truly familiar elements are Gibbons' ghostly slither and a filmic melodrama ("Threads" and "Nylon Smile").

It's been ten years since the world last heard from Portishead, the U.K. trip-hop trio, and
they do not sound like they've spent the past decade going to therapy, listening to new
music or making friends. Actually, they sound like they spent it locked in a tea cupboard
underwater off the coast of Bristol, with a piped-in orchestral soundtrack from Dario
Argento horror movies. Is this a problem? No way — nobody ever listened to Port... More >